Carthage. Joyce Carol Oates
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or had any ideas; and to Juliet’s astonishment Caroline said hesitantly she’d seen Cressida the night before, or someone who looked very much like Cressida, at the Roebuck Inn at Wolf’s Head Lake.
Juliet was so astonished, she nearly dropped her cell phone.
Cressida at the Roebuck Inn? At Wolf’s Head Lake?
Caroline said that she’d been there with her fiancé Artie Petko and another couple but they hadn’t stayed long. The Roebuck Inn had used to be a nice place but lately bikers had been taking it over on weekends—Adirondack Hells Angels. There was a rock band comprised of local kids people liked, but the music was deafening, and the place was jammed—“Just too much happening.”
Inside the tavern, there’d been a gang of guys they knew and a few girls in several booths. The air had been thick with smoke. Caroline was surprised to see Brett there—“He wasn’t with any girl, just with his friends,” Caroline said quickly, “but there were girls kind of hanging out with them. Brett was looking—he wasn’t looking—maybe it was the light in the place, but Brett was looking—all right. The surgery he’s had—I think it has helped a lot. And he had dark glasses on. And—anyway—there came Cressida—I think it was Cressida—just out of nowhere we happened to see her, and she didn’t see us—she seemed to have just come into the taproom, alone—in all that crowd, and having to push her way through—she’s so small—I don’t think there was anyone with her, unless maybe she’d come with someone, a couple—it wasn’t clear who was with who. Cressida was wearing those black jeans she always wears, and a black T-shirt, and what looked like a little striped cotton sweater; it was a surprise to see her, Artie and I both thought so, Artie said he’d never seen your sister in anyplace like the Roebuck, not ever. He knows your dad, he was saying, ‘Is that Zeno Mayfield’s daughter? The one that’s so smart?’ and I said, ‘God, I hope not. What’s she doing here?’ Brett was in a booth with Rod Halifax, and Jimmy Weisbeck, and that asshole Duane Stumpf, and they were pretty drunk; and there was Cressida, talking with Brett, or trying to talk with Brett; but things got so crowded, and kind of out of control, so we decided to leave. So I don’t actually know—I mean, I don’t know for sure—if it was your sister, Juliet. But I think it had to be, there’s nobody quite like Cressida.”
Juliet asked what time this had been.
Caroline said about 11:30 P.M. Because they’d left and gone to the Echo Lake Tavern and stayed there for about forty minutes and were home by 1 A.M.
“Oh God, Juliet—you’re saying Cressida hasn’t come home? She isn’t home? You don’t know where she is? I’m so sorry we didn’t go over to talk to her—maybe she needed a ride home—maybe she got stranded there. But we thought, well—she must’ve come with someone. And there was Brett, and she knows him, and he knows her—so, we thought, maybe . . .”
Slowly Juliet entered the house. Arlette saw her just inside the doorway. In her face was a strange, stricken expression, as if something too large for her skull had been forced inside it.
“What is it, Juliet? Have you heard—something?”
“Yes. I think so. I think I’ve heard—something.”
FOLLOWING THIS, things happened swiftly.
Zeno called Brett Kincaid’s cell phone number—no answer.
Zeno called a number listed in the Carthage directory for Kincaid, E.—no answer.
Zeno climbed into his Land Rover and drove to Ethel Kincaid’s house on Potsdam Street, another hillside street beyond Fremont: a two-storey wood frame with a peeling-beige facade, set close to the curb, where Ethel Kincaid in a soiled kimono answered the door to his repeated knocking with a look of alarmed astonishment.
“Is he home? Where is he?”
Fumbling at the front of the kimono, which shone with a cheap lurid light as if fluorescent, Ethel peered at Zeno cautiously.
“I—don’t know . . . I guess n-not, his Jeep isn’t in the driveway . . .”
Between Zeno Mayfield and Ethel Kincaid there was a layered sort of history—vague, vaguely resentful (on Ethel’s part: for Zeno Mayfield, when he’d been mayor of Carthage and nominally Ethel Kincaid’s boss, had not ever seemed to remember her name when he encountered her) and vaguely guilty (on Zeno’s part: for he understood that he’d snubbed this plain fierce-glaring woman whom life had mysteriously disappointed). And now, the breakup of Zeno’s daughter and Ethel’s son lay between them like wreckage.
“Do you have any idea where Brett is?”
“N-No . . .”
“Do you know where he went last night?”
“No . . .”
“Or with who?”
Ethel Kincaid regarded Zeno, his disheveled clothing, his metallic-stubbly jaws and swampy eyes that were both pleading and threatening, with a defiant sort of alarm. She had the just discernibly battered look of a woman well versed in the wayward emotions of men and in the need to position herself out of the range of a man’s sudden lunging grasp.
“I’m afraid I don’t know, Mr. Mayfield. Brett’s friends don’t come to the house, he goes to them. I think he goes to them.”
Mr. Mayfield was uttered with a pointless sort of spite. Surely they were social equals, or had been, when Zeno’s daughter had become engaged to Ethel’s son.
Zeno remembered Arlette remarking that Brett’s mother was so unfriendly. Even Juliet who rarely spoke of others in a critical manner murmured of her fiancé’s mother She is not naturally warmhearted or easy to get to know. But—we will try!
Poor Juliet had tried, and failed.
Arlette had tried, and failed.
“Ethel, I’m sorry to disturb you at such an early hour. I tried to call, but there was no answer. It’s crucial that I speak with Brett—or at least know where I can find him. This isn’t about Juliet, incidentally—it involves my daughter Cressida.” Zeno was making it a point to speak slowly and clearly and without any suggestion of the pent-up fury he felt for this unhelpful woman who’d taken a step back from him, clutching at the front of her rumpled kimono as if fearing he might snatch it open. “We’ve been told that they were together for a while last night—at the Roebuck Inn. And Cressida hasn’t come home all night, and we don’t know where she is. And we think—your son might know.”
Ethel Kincaid was shaking her head. A tangle of graying dirty-blond hair, falling to her shoulders, uncombed. A smell as of dried sweat and talcum powder wafting from her soft loose fleshy body inside her clothing.
Now a look of apprehension came into her face. And cunning.
Ethel shook her head emphatically no—“I don’t know anything that my son does.”
“Could I see his room, please?”
“His room? You want to see his—room? In this house?”
“Yes. Please.”
“But—why?”
Zeno had no idea why. The impulse had come to him, desperately; he could not retreat without attempting something.
Ethel was looking confused now. She was a woman in her mid-fifties whom life had used negligently—her skin was sallow, her eyelashes and eyebrows so scanty as to be near-invisible, her mouth was a sullen smudge. She took another step back into the dimly lighted hall of the house as if the glare in Zeno Mayfield’s face was such, she shrank from it. Stammering she said he couldn’t come inside, that wasn’t a good idea, and she had to say good-bye to him now, she had to close the door now, she could not speak to him any longer.
“Ethel—wait! Just let me see Brett’s room. Maybe—there will be something there, that will help me . . .”
“No. That isn’t a good idea. I’m going to close the door